Escaping the stresses of modern life at the end of my rope

It may have been the most-stressful vacation ever.

Generally, my family's annual pilgrimage to tranquil Fountain Park Chautauqua (www.fountain-park.org) revolves around simple pleasures such as roasting ears, peach pies and the Fritz-Constable euchre tournament. We still had all those things this year, and even won the euchre tourney in overtime to return the trophy to our cabin for the first time since 2004. (My wife's good cards and great play earned her the nickname of "trophy wife.")

But stress builds when an unrelenting parade of cousins, siblings, friends, loved ones and visitors sit, eat and sleep en masse in the cramped, rustic, 103-year-old Constable cottage outside Remington, Ind., without air conditioning, telephone, TV, dishwasher or other modern conveniences.

One of our 12-year-old sons tripped over a tiny stone bridge while playing Ghosts in the Graveyard, and broke three teeth, including his front two permanent teeth, which required two emergency runs back to the suburbs. My wife, swamped with work, and I were forced to use cell phones to negotiate the travails of contractors, village bureaucrats, lenders and helpful neighbors as we launched our home-addition project from afar. We found out and worried about loved ones and friends with illnesses and marriage problems and the like.

And, having told (warned) the conservative Republicans in rural Indiana since 2004 about Barack Obama's upcoming presidency, I may have been less patient and more obnoxious than usual in explaining once again that Obama is not a member of al-Qaida.

So when the gang of young cousins abandoned their bicycles, board games and imaginations to veg out in front of the computer game "Age of Empires II" on a previously contraband laptop, I was at my rope's end. I needed an escape.

The kids provided one.

I'm not sure which one came up with the idea, but, having been banned from the cottage for several hours during a rare Uncle Bill cleaning jag, the cousins devised a plan. They wouldn't need to enter the cottage if they had a ladder that would reach the second-story porch. If adults wouldn't give them a ladder, they'd make their own out of scrap wood and rope.

A group biked the 2 miles to the local True Value hardware store. As they took full advantage of the free popcorn, the kids munched up and down the aisles. We bought 50 feet of "heavy duty," half-inch-thick rope (with a 567-pound rating, it could support a half-dozen little kids), a couple of eye hooks and a box of 4-inch deck screws for about $35.

The kids measured and cut the rope. For steps, they used leftover oak floor boards from an old remodeling project. Handy Uncle Bob, with his cordless drill, made holes to string the rope through the boards, and fastened an old 2-by-4 to the giant oak tree next to the cabin.

For the rest of our vacation, the kids were all about the ladder. They tied the knots and attached the steps. They decided to make the steps extra far apart to keep littler kids at bay and make it difficult for an invader to scale the ladder while clutching a water balloon.

Of course, they needed a way to get their own water balloons to their second-story. So they biked back to True Value for the $4.79 pulley they'd use to hoist their cache of water balloons. Embracing the "green movement" that is sweeping rural Indiana, where wind turbines are popping up in farm fields, the kids cut the backs off recycled plastic water jugs from the local IGA to make balloon holders.

They used a second pulley to beef up security by allowing them to pull up the ladder at the first sign of trouble. They installed no-skid tape to make their own climbs safer.

It was like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life as boys and girls, barefoot and dirty, came together around that rope ladder. Climbers included a 5-year-old girl proving she could do it by herself, and an Iraq war veteran proving he was fully recovered from his mortar wounds.

When the ladder was finished, an army of kids waged the water balloon fight to end all water balloon fights, with more than 1,000 balloons filling the air between the cottages.

For a few moments we forgot about hospitals, dentists, mortgage rates, divorces, contractors, work, politics and even the 14-people sleeping dorm-style in a one-bedroom cottage with a loft.

The rope ladder gave us our great vacation. The kids understood that, too.

"And," they each said at some time during this last week, "we did it ourselves."